


Relationship Status: 'it's complicated'

by Cards_Slash



Series: Sass Verse [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:56:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Side story to Sass-Badger Versus Son-of-No-One, directly follows chapter 47.  </p><p>Ezio is intrigued by the artist but he's also grappling with the fact that what happened to Leonardo's face is all his fault.  So he tries to make amends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relationship Status: 'it's complicated'

“Where were you?” It was not the greeting Ezio expected when he returned from meeting Federico for lunch. The anger on his Mother’s face was as far from his expectation as he could imagine. The way her hands rested at her hips and her face went stony-and-heated was no match for the hiss of breath that was rising up from the center of her chest. The anger in those words was beyond measure of anything _simple_ that he might have (foolishly) done to anger her. “What do you imagine happened while you were gone?” she asked. “What do you imagine could have happened when you walked out and left _my guest_ here?” 

Ezio closed his eyes for a moment and pressed his hands across his face. “How bad?” he asked.

“They are being treated at the hospital,” Mother said. She reached behind her to pick up a bag and threw it at him. “Go. Fix what you have broken and while you are begging forgiveness for allow— _encouraging_ this to happen, stop and tell your cousin he is no longer welcome in my home.” Then she threw up her hands at him as if she wanted to strangle him and turned to go.

\--

(But before that, there was): Out on the beach with sand blowing across his feet and the generous warmth of the late-August sun baking his shoulders through his shirt, Ezio let out a breath like uttering a quiet prayer for understanding and said, “so I had sex with the artist last night.” He took a sip of his drink with a sense of peace that he did not feel. 

Federico looked away from watching his wife play in the waves washing up across the damp sand to look at him. His expression was not hateful, not hurtful, but confused and _curious_. The quirk of his lip was _amused_. “I knew it would happen to you one day. No longer satisfied to hold effortless sway over the women of the planet, you have expanded your sexual tyranny to men as well.” He picked up his drink (something clear and alcoholic for the man that didn’t have to drive an hour back to the villa). 

Ezio smiled. “Something like that.”

His brother licked his lips and took a second drink before resting the cold glass against his knee and squinting out at Cristina and Vincenzio. “Was it good?”

“It was—transcendent.” He smiled down at his own stupid knees while Federico threw his head back and laughed. The wavering thing in Ezio’s chest took momentary offense at being laughed at but he was chuckling along with his brother even as he leaned down to pick up a scoop of sand to throw at him. It sprayed across his bare shoulders and his hair, fell into his drink and caught on his wide-open-mouth to stop his laugh. 

“Whore,” Federico hissed at him. He spit the sand out to the side of his chair and picked at the bits of sand stuck to the rim of his glass with fine-fine-fingertips and a sturdy-scowl. His voice was not jovial (distracted, deep, _counselling_ ) when he spoke again. “Were you drunk? Did you let your dick think for your brain? I do not care,” Federico said, he looked sideways for a half-beat so Ezio could see that he was serious, “that you fucked this man. I make poor jokes but it is your dick and your life and you may do whatever you want with both. But you brought the baby to our house to get his vengeance and then you fucked the target of his rage.” Federico flicked the bits of sand off his wet fingertips and brought the glass close to his face to peer at the liquid in it. The bits of sand were numerous along the ice and dancing down the sides of it. “You ruined my drink,” Federico said.

“I like him,” Ezio said.

“Ha,” Federico said. “I did not hate de Pazzi until you did.”

“Leonardo is not an ass,” Ezio said. “Vieri was an ass. Vieri deserved to be hated. What has Leonardo done? He did not know that this woman—”

“If she is a woman,” Federico mumbled.

“—had fucked our cousin, or that she—whatever their relationship is. He did not know that.”

Federico set his glass down and sat forward in his seat so that he could turn sideways and face Ezio. Their legs were close enough their knees bumped together and Federico’s voice went soft with quiet wisdom. “I can forgive a man for acting out of injured pride. I can forgive a man for avenging what he loves. Suppose Leonardo does love this _woman_ , there is no reason to think that Altair is fit for anyone. He is a plague I would not wish on my worst enemy. I can even forgive a man for taunting someone who is so easily taunted. I have done it—often. But Altair is ours and you brought him here to do one thing, Ezio.”

Ezio sighed. “I won’t stop him.”

There was the laugh again, quiet and bitter. Federico reached over to cup one hand around Ezio’s cheek and slap the flat of his four fingers against the other side (very affectionately). “There is not much I genuinely like about our cousin, but his vengeance is legendary. The only thing that matches it is his temper.”

Ezio shoved Federico back with one hand against his chest. “So I have fucked a man that I set up and when I return, I’ll find Father burying a body in our yard?”

“It would not be the first body,” Federico said. Then he laid back in the lounge chair. “You fucked a man that you knew would not survive this charade without damage and then you left him to his fate. That is something I would do. Something Claudia would do—it is not something I expected from you.”

That was a sobering thought. Ezio huffed a sigh. “I should go.”

“You should,” Federico agreed. 

\--

Ezio went to Altair first. It was easy to find him with Desmond hovering nearby. The emergency room had once been a familiar playground for Ezio to roam. Between his own injuries, illness and Petruccio’s many unfortunate trips to this place, Ezio had memorized the layout of it. Once upon a time he had known the names of all the nurses and now it was remodeled to look new and the nurses that staffed it were strangers. 

“How angry is Mama Maria, Ezio?” Desmond asked. He had a bruise on his jaw and a flat, iciness to his voice that betrayed his anger. 

“It is not pretty,” Ezio said. (That was an understatement.) “How is Leonardo?”

“I’ll go check,” Desmond said. He left the room that housed Altair sitting up on a hospital bed with blood streaks dried across his back and face. From the blurry look on Altair’s face he had received very effective pain killers.

“Hey,” Altair said. He held out his hand for his bag but when Ezio tried to hand it to him, his fingers tightened around air. Altair closed his eyes and peeled them open again in an attempt to regain his sobriety. (An attempt that clearly failed.) 

“You are not welcome to return,” Ezio said. Then he pulled up the chair that waited near the bed and sat in it. He laid the bag across the end of the bed and lifted Altair’s arm with his fingertips to see the bloody curve of his wound. It had not been properly bandaged yet but smelled like antiseptic and new blood. “What did you fall on?”

“Table,” Altair said. He rubbed his face with his hand and groaned when his fingers hit across the bruising around his nose. There was fresh blood on his fingers when he pulled them away. “Why are you here?”

“I was sent to tell yo—”

Altair rolled his eyes and tipped his head so his chin was against his shoulder and he was glaring down at Ezio in the chair. “I have been asked to leave your family home so often I do not actually _need_ a formal messenger. Why are you here?”

Ezio sighed and leaned back but that was not comfortable so he stood again. “I would support you, Altair, if you asked me to but I do not have any malice toward this man. He is kind. He is thoughtful. He has insights into the world that I have never taken the time to dream were possible.”

Altair snorted. “I heard he’s also a very good fuck.” His tongue ran across his lips in slow motion, dry and ineffective.

“He is a master of the human body,” Ezio said. Leonardo also had the unfortunate distinction of being an unexpected but inherently kind person. “Let me see your hands.” 

Altair was blinking at him again, his eyebrows furled up in aggravated confusion. His hands were resting in such a way as to hide his knuckles and he didn’t move to obey immediately. “Why?” he asked.

“I want to know how much damage you inflicted.” (He would like to know how much guilt he should have. Wasn’t that a strange sensation to have _now_ when it had been his idea to invite Altair to this exact end.) 

For a moment, Altair only stared at him. The unfocused intensity of his stare was no less mean for the lack of concentration the drugs caused. His tongue ran across his lips as he rolled his eyes and lifted both of his hands to show them to Ezio. His palms were dirty with the dried flakes of blood, the skin of his knuckles were rubbed raw but unbroken. “Why’d you fuck him, Ezio?”

A shrug was not an answer but it seemed like the only answer good enough to offer. “He is very charming.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Altair asked. He stared leaning back but stopped with a stab of pain pinched through his whole body. There was disgusted defeat in his sigh as he sat up again. “To see if I care if you fuck him again? Is he that good?”

It was a hard thing to explain. (Harder to explain now, when Altair had every reason to hate Leonardo and no reason not think anything good of him. And also because Altair was so adamantly opposed to the notion of finding men possibly attractive. Ezio did not think he’d ever be on this side of the conversation.) “He is…” Thorough. Attentive. Gentle (but also not when appropriate). “…caring.”

“Well great,” Altair said. He tipped his head back and his eyes close. It seemed almost as if he had fallen asleep sitting upright save for his unwavering posture. 

“I’ll hate him if you ask me to,” Ezio said. It was not the most favorable outcome but Federico had not been wrong about what he said.

Altair’s lips quirked up without his eyes opening. A hiccup of amusement seemed to run through his whole body before he opened his eyes (with uneven speeds). He was biting his tongue with pleased-and-vicious enjoyment of those words. But it faded out to an exhausted, “there’s no excuse for hate, Ezio. Do whatever you want.”

Their brief discussion was interrupted by the curt rap of knuckles against the door frame. Maria Thorpe was standing there looking slim and feminine in a tight dress. Her unsmiling face ignored Ezio (for the best) and looked directly at Altair with a kind of weary dread. “You have complicated my life, Altair. What am I supposed to say about this fight? How do I explain that my _boyfriend_ got into a pissy battle with a man who fucked his online girlfriend?” She waved a hand at Ezio to dismiss him from the room and Altair nodded toward the door to tell him (again) to leave.

\--

The damage done to Altair’s knuckles had provided a convincing but misleading lie about how much damage had been done to Leonardo’s face. Ezio had been in his share of fights (he had started many of them) and had memorized all the specific pains associated with being beaten in the face. He knew the difference between a split lip and a swollen eye. He had broken his nose and bitten through his lip and he had once (in a very memorable fight) broken his jaw. 

Leonardo was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed in front of him, his face tipped down and his blond hair hanging in stringy-red-brown clumps around his face. He was shirtless and the bruises on his shoulder and chest were blue-purple in such a contrast to his light-skin that they were visible from the doorway. He looked up when Ezio tapped his knuckles on the door and a sore attempt for a smile interrupted the massacre of bruises and swollen, broken skin on his face. 

There was an ice pack laying on the bed next to his left knee. In his hand he had a pen and a sheet of paper covered in little sketches of horses in mid-gallop. The attempt at smile did not last long but fade almost instantly to a grimace. 

There were so many things Ezio wanted to (or needed to, really) say. They were spinning around the inside of his skull in a great discordant tornado, banging awkwardly against one another in blurts of half-realized vocalizations. But what he said was: “Mother has sent Altair away. He won’t be back to the villa while you are there.”

“How is he?” Leonardo asked. He motioned at the door with a helpless roll of his hand. “The other cousin would not tell me anything but ‘fine now’.” The left side of his face had taken the majority of the beating. Altair was stubbornly right handed with his fighting (and that was for the best or his ability to ignore pain and his inability to know when to quit would result in far worse things). Leonardo’s lip was split, his cheek was swollen, his left eye was bruised so completely the whites had blood streaks all throughout them. “Stop,” Leonardo said. He straightened up out of the slouch he’d been employing to allow him sketch his little horses. 

“Stop what?” Ezio asked.

“Feeling guilty,” Leonardo said. “I knew that one of the cousins had invited him. You are predictably loyal to one another and sadly dependent on physical violence. Even if you had told me that you brought him here, I would still have done what we did. Even if you had sworn to protect me from him, I would still have found a way to do what I did. Love is a violent, hurtful, irrational passion.” Then he paused and licked at the split in his lip. The silence dragged a minute as he looked to the side (not at Ezio) before looking back. There was less good humor in his face the second time he looked at him. “Your guilt is not wanted. What I did was my choice. Now I live with the consequences.”

Ezio nodded. “I’m sorry, still.” Then he came into the room and sat in the chair near the bed. 

Leonardo turned to look at him. “If you are sorry, be sorry that I had intended to fulfill the promises I made and now I will be able to for some time.” He put his legs over the side of the bed and grimaced again. There were a few stray marks on his chest and blood dried into the creases of his hands. “You did not answer my question. How is Altair?”

That was a stupid question. Ezio sighed (loudly). “Physically, he will be fine. The wound looks clean.” Then he shrugged. “I imagine between my Mother, his girlfriend, Lucy and your friend his ears will grow tired of disapproval.”

The briefest look of satisfaction crossed Leonardo’s face before it faded into resignation. “Sass won’t be angry at _him_.” But then he looked toward the door. “Will they let me leave now? I am not as fond of hospitals as I once was.”

“I’ll ask,” Ezio said.

\--

Father was at the Villa by the time Ezio managed to make it home. Extracting Leonardo from the hospital had been made difficult by the doctor’s insistence that they check him for a variety of possible head injuries. It was evening before they managed their escape and Ezio had fond dreams of finding his bed and remaining in it indefinitely. He had expected his sister and Mother would catch him to tell him all the ways in which he had failed but there was no reason to expect his Father would be there.

Claudia met them at the door. “Leonardo,” she said with more sympathy in her voice than she’d had for any of her actual family in all her life. She looked at his face with acute pain stuck on hers before she launched into an apology that was too sincere to have been ordered by their parents. Ezio was going to tell her to leave it alone because they were both tired and hungry but the instantly recognizable sound of his Father clearing his throat interrupted him. Ezio looked over toward him in time to see the subtle motion of his hand inviting him to follow.

Father took him to the study tucked into one of the corners of the downstairs. It was mostly windowless (an anomaly in this home) with a rich color to the walls and furnishing that made it ominously dark. “Your Mother tells me you invited Altair to our home. Sit,” Father sat in his own seat and crossed his legs while he held out his hand toward the second seat. Ezio sat with the same dread that he’d sat as a child (all the while aware consequences were waiting). “Explain.”

“I—” Was angry at Claudia for spreading malicious lies about him. Felt that Altair deserved the chance to meet the man that taunted him on the internet. Didn’t realize Leonardo was actually a decent person. “—thought it was fair.”

Father considered that a minute. His perfect posture and his slim weathered face a contemptuous reproach for his behavior. His hands rested perfectly still while he looked at Ezio without pause for a full minute (and ten seconds) all the while maintaining the expectation that Ezio not look away from him (although he often did want to). “You have a child’s sense of fairness. Your Mother says she asked you to look after the artist and keep him away from your cousin.”

“I did—”

“She explained that this was because it was your fault our guest was in danger. You did not, Ezio. If you had, we would not be in this situation.”

Ezio nodded. 

“You are too old to behave in this manner. You know your cousin’s temper as well as anyone. This is not a matter between members of our family, this was not a matter of importance at all, but one man’s injured pride. Your acts are inexcusably and intentionally childish. We are disappointed in you.” Then his father raised a hand and waved it at him. “Go.”

\--

The scene of the crime had already been sterilized. There was no evidence left that anything had ever happened except the absence of a table. Ezio went out to sit on the lounge chair on the balcony and found Desmond was already there. He had a bottle of liquor at the side of his seat and a belligerent drunkenness making his face an even more perfect imitation of their cousin’s. 

Ezio hummed a growl and sat on the floor of the balcony with his back pressed to the railing. 

Desmond held the bottle out toward him and Ezio took it to take a long swallow. It burned his throat and settled into his gut with an unpleasant gurgle. Drinking on an empty stomach was the most ill-advised habit. “My girlfriend is pissed at me.” He took the bottle back and tipped it up to take a few swallows before letting it rest in his lap. “So pissed.”

Just when Ezio wasn’t certain he could accept any more guilt, more found its way to him. He sighed. “Why?”

“I was sent here to keep him from having this fight.” Desmond shrugged. “I told her there was no stopping him once he got it into his head.” He took another drink. “She thinks that I didn’t actually try. She’s not wrong.” He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I mean, I tried to drag him off the guy.”

Ezio laughed at that. “Mother shouldn’t have sent Federico away.”

Desmond took another drink and made a pained noise as the burn. “Federico wouldn’t have stopped him. He would have secured the area and let the fight go until someone stopped moving. Giovanni.” Desmond tipped the bottle toward him. “Your father would dragged him off by the hair. Altair is still scared of your father.”

“That is respect, Desmond. It is not fear.” Ezio took the bottle when it was offered to him and set it on the other side of his body where Desmond couldn’t reach it. “You should not be drinking. I remember you saying as much at Christmas. Are you so upset about your girlfriend’s disapproval?”

“I’m not happy about my girlfriend’s disapproval,” Desmond said. He closed his eyes and sighed into a more relaxed slouch. “The little shit head said I’ve never fought for anything in my life.”

That burden wasn’t his to carry (at least). Ezio picked up the bottle to drink to that bit of wisdom from the baby. Then he sat the bottle down again and sighed. “Fuck him, Desmond.”

Desmond giggled, opened his eyes just enough to look at him. “He’s not my type.”

Ezio laughed with him. And then picked up the bottle and got to his feet. He set the bottle on one of the tables and then came back to motion Desmond up to his feet. “Come on. You need to be safe in your bed.”

Desmond groaned and stumbled up to his feet. 

\--

Ezio found his Mother in the kitchen the next morning. He had a half-plan to take Desmond to the airport (as his cousin had drunkenly mumbled on about the night before) but he hadn’t been able to find him. Mother was eating by the counter while she looked out the window with a wistful (pained) look in her eyes. His lumbering entrance interrupted her reverie and she looked over at him with the soft mist of pain in her eyes that often plagued her in this house. Each of its corners another echo of the child that had died here. 

“Good morning,” He said. “Have you seen Desmond?”

“He went to the airport this morning,” Mother said. Then she dusted her fingers off into the dish she’d been eating from and cleared her throat. “I have heard that you had sex with Leonardo.”

Of course she heard that. Ezio nodded in lack of any suitable defense.

“I cannot tell if you are malicious or ignorant. I’d like to think that my son has never purposefully been a monster but I am equally saddened by the thought that you are so easily distracted by the whims of your penis.” The latter half of her scolding could not possibly have been a surprise to her at this point. She held eye contact a half-breath too long for comfort before turning her head away. “Find a way to make up for what you’ve done.”

“Leonardo has said he does no—”

“Ezio,” Mother interrupted. There was no room for objection in the face of his name spoken so sharply. 

“Yes Mother,” he said dutifully.

\--

Leonardo was in the garden (again) with the table and his sketch pad. Claudia was sitting with him, laughing about something that had been said before Ezio interrupted with his presence. Her face was pink with exertion and streaked with tears. Her left arm was lying across the table while Leonardo cupped one of his hands around the side of it and stroked the tip of his Sharpie across her skin to put the finishing touches on a long, bright feather that ran from the inside of her wrist to her elbow. 

“What’s this?” Ezio asked.

Claudia sniffled and wiped her cheeks with her free hand. “We were talking about Petruccio.” She was looking at Leonardo’s ducked head with such adoration that Ezio didn’t know if the instant jealousy he felt was more or less than deserved than the equally sharp urge to protect her from Leonardo’s lustful advances. 

“Ezio,” Leonardo said. He looked up from what he was doing long enough to offer a lopsided smile. The swelling was mostly gone from his face but the splits in his lip and the cut across his cheek was more noticeable without it. The discoloration was garish (at best) and his left eye lid was completely black. “Good morning.” The look on Ezio’s face must have been dumb shock because Leonardo sighed as he picked up a spare piece of paper folded like a fan and used it to waft air across Claudia’s arm. “I thought it added a good deal of character to my face.”

Claudia made a rude noise. “Someone should add character to Altair’s face.”

“His face has character,” Leonardo countered.

“ _Bad_ character,” Claudia insisted. She looked down at the feather on her arm and touched the tiny little eagle silhouettes that broke off from the very top of it to fly up toward her upper arm. “This is beautiful,” she said.

“Almost as beautiful as the arm that is its canvas,” Leonardo said. He took a moment to put all the caps back on his markers and as such was not looking at them when Claudia turned to glare at Ezio. When he looked up again, Claudia was smiling so innocently that there was no point in accusing her of evil.

“Do not make her head swell anymore,” Ezio said. “It’s already too fat for her shoulders.” 

Leonardo smiled (as much as he could without hurting himself). “I believe I am meant to be doing some work now. I am sorry to have to ask you to go.” 

“Do not apologize,” Claudia said. “I’m sorry I kept you so long.” Then she got up (so prettily in comparison to her usual lumbering around) and came over to grab Ezio by the arm and pull him after her. “Someone will come tell you when lunch is ready.”

\--

Ezio found Leonardo rubbing the space above his eye with a grimace stuck on his face. There was sweat in his hair that could not be excused by the minimal heat of the day. He stopped a considerate distance away from Leonardo (and his open sketch book) and cleared his throat softly. “Lunch is ready,” he said.

Leonardo nodded and leaned forward to grab the cover of the sketch book and flip it closed again. He sat back in his chair with both of his eyes closed and drew in a settling breath before he opened them again. “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” Ezio asked. “With sympathy? My face as looked like that more than once.”

Then Leonardo laughed. It was such a tiny sound, low-and-murmuring as he set his case of supplies over the top of the sketch book and then dragged them both off the table. “I have a friend who has a hard time letting people look at—” Leonardo motioned with his free hand. “I did not understand. I thought to myself, there is nothing different in the way I look at you. I see now I was wrong.” He set his stuff on one of the tables in an alcove where it would be protected from the sun and weather. 

“I don’t mean to offend you,” Ezio said. “It is—” He sighed. “I feel responsible.”

Leonardo rested both of his hands on Ezio’s shoulders before shifting the way he was standing and sliding his arm around the back of his neck. “Do not feel responsible. But if your guilt wants to make me feel better—I have several ideas that I believe we could manage.”

“Your face looks as if it has been through a meat grinder and still you are propositioning me with sex?” Ezio said. He tipped his head back against Leonardo’s arm around his neck. He wanted a smile but he settled for the amusement that was evident in the unbruised parts of his face. “I feel we have quite a lot in common, my friend.”

“I always thought we might,” Leonardo assured him. 

\--

Leonardo spent his afternoon searching for good lighting with Claudia as his willing assistant, sitting in different rooms of the house and benches of the garden. Her unfailing smile was as obnoxious to Ezio as nails across a chalkboard. 

Dinner was an elongated affair that involved his Father and several courses and so many layers of apologies that one might have mistaken their intentions for convincing Leonardo not to sue them. (That wasn’t such an outlandish notion. Ezio thought he might have mentioned to Leonardo that he should try. Mother and Father were at the height of their polite guilt and would settle out-of-court with no contest. But then Altair would drive Leonardo into the ground with a relentless assault of countersuing.) Ezio was tipsy on sipping wine long before the meal was over. 

Claudia tried to capture Leonardo for her own whims but he slid his arm around Leonardo’s back and said, “shame on you sister. You have kept him away from his bed long enough.” Then he offered to make sure Leonardo found his way to his bed and Mother was pleased to see him take such an interest.

“I can walk,” Leonardo told him on the back stairs. He turned around at the first landing with his back against the wall and his arms slipping around Ezio’s shoulders to pull him up. “I find your jealousy alluring. Don’t think I mean to dissuade you from that.” It would have been amazing to kiss him, to taste the delicate wine on his lips but the fresh spots of blood welling up from the splits in his lip were irritated from the meal. “I’m certain you’ve heard about the benefit of endorphins in pain control?”

Ezio looked up from his lips to his eyes. “Have I?” he said.

“You must have.” Leonardo caught his hand and dragged it down the impossible length of his body to press against his dick through his pants. “I would be happy to give you a full lecture on the matter.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Ezio said. That was sincere (not arrogant).

“Do not touch my face,” Leonardo said. “The rest of me is fine.” Then he tugged them onward toward his room.

\--

Ezio did not smoke (often). When he did, he liked it best like this: with the oddly pleased joy of immature sex acts still settling on his skin. The golden glow of Mother’s most prized like an aura that settled all around them. Leonardo was lounging naked against the headboard with his long-long legs half opened on the bed and his eyes narrowed as he pulled at the carefully-wrapped joint pinched between his fingers. 

“Not too much,” Ezio said. He was lying on his back in the opposite direction, pushing his feet against the headboard and scratching at the hair on his chest where the sweat of his most recent exertion had not yet dried. “Pot and pain medication should not mix.”

Leonardo tipped his head to blow smoke rings into the air and smiled when he managed it. “I’m not taking pain medication,” he said. “I like pot better.” Then he made a low noise in his throat something akin to a growl of satisfaction and one of infinite hunger. His hand slid up the inside of Ezio’s thigh. 

“Why?” Ezio asked. “Do you have a moral objection to pain relief?”

The quick lick of Leonardo’s tongue against the crease of his mouth was not lustful but angry. “I’ve done enough damage here. Pain medicine interrupts the filter from my brain to my mouth. There are things I have promised not to tell.”

“About the woman?” Ezio asked. He finished taking a drag off the joint and passed it back to Leonardo. 

“About Sass, yes,” Leonardo said. He held the joint in his fingers for a moment as his fingertips carded through the overgrown of hair on Ezio’s legs with a fond kind of smile. The backs of his fingers brushed against his dick where it had landed against his body after he fell backward to enjoy the pleasant glow. “You have a magnificent body.”

“I am very proud of it,” Ezio assured him. He rubbed his hand up the slim length of Leonardo’s calf toward his knee. “Altair is gone. You do not need to worry about him hearing what you say.”

Leonardo blew the smoke out and leaned forward to hand the joint back to him. His hand slid around Ezio’s and pulled him up to sit as Leonardo leaned up onto his own knees and sat across his lap. “Sass told me I did not need to worry about Altair being here,” Leonardo said. His face was close enough to clearly see the freckles on the unmarred part of his cheek. The blood streaks in his left eye were mesmerizing and terrible. “I knew that was a lie the way I know that anything I say about Sass will find its way to Altair’s ears.” He crossed his legs around Ezio’s body and said, “it hurts my mouth to smoke that. Could you help?”

Ezio smiled and nodded. He pulled the smoke into his mouth and cupped his hand around Leonardo’s neck to hold him in place and blew the smoke into his mouth. Their lips brushed together without pressure and Leonardo’s eyes fluttered shut. “I wish it weren’t true,” Ezio said. “We could be friends if we could trust one another.”

“Since we cannot be friends, we must settle for being lovers for a while,” Leonardo said. “I am thinking of another lesson I could teach you. Whenever you are ready.”

“It will have to wait until tomorrow,” he said. “I was not only offering excuses when I said you needed sleep. It’s true.” He motioned Leonardo closer again for another pull of the joint and their mouths pressed closer together. The temptation was enough to make a man forget himself but he managed to pull back rather than push forward. “Tomorrow?” Ezio asked.

“Yes.”

\--

Ezio found Leonardo in the kitchen with Mother the next morning. His long body and broad shoulders were bent in defeat (or fatigue) but his face was no less attentive to Mother while she spoke. 

“—radiant light,” Mother finished. From the tone of her voice it was clear she was speaking about Petruccio. The topic had never been allowed to fester but pulled out and inspected frequently throughout the years. 

Leonardo nodded. The plate in front of him was disheveled but most likely not actually eaten from. There was a pinch of pain around his mouth and eyes that could not be overlooked. His shirt’s neckline was loose enough to show the darkening bruises on the bony parts of his shoulders. “Is that what you want to preserve in this painting?” Leonardo asked. “I have heard many stories and all of them speak of this. This radiant light.”

“Yes,” Mother said. “I think that is the thing I will always miss. The thing that I do not think I’ll ever see again as long as I am alive.” 

Ezio cleared his throat. “Do you need help moving things to the garden?” he asked.

Leonardo had an arm around his stomach when he sat up and one hand pushed against the countertop. “I do not turn down kind offers,” he said. “If you would excuse me, please?” 

Mother nodded and reached to take his plate without a word about how nothing had been eaten off it. She scraped it clean and tucked it away in the sink while Ezio followed Leonardo back up the stairs toward his room. His art things were kept there despite the offer that they be stored on the ground floor to provide for easy transport. 

“You didn’t sleep,” Ezio said.

Leonardo made a noise. “It’s not the first time.” He pointed out the things he needed and the two of them carried the whole mess of it downstairs and out into the garden. Petruccio’s statue was glowing in the sunlight and Leonardo sat (like collapsing) into the seat they’d moved there for him. 

“All pain medicine?” Ezio asked.

“What?” 

“You said you could not take the medicine you were given because it disrupts your filter. Would lesser pain medications do the same? We have a small pharmacy in this house.” Ezio watched Leonardo mull over the offer before he nodded his head.

“Yes, that’s fine.”

“I’ll bring them back.” By the time he returned, Leonardo had set up his easel and was contemplating the paints he brought. He thanked Ezio for the medicine and the glass of water and then motioned him to leave.

\--

Claudia pouted through lunch because she could not give Leonardo to give up his post. Ezio rolled his eyes at her spoiled dramatics and excused himself from the table under the pretense of disliking his sister. She made it easy by calling him names as he left. 

Out in the garden, Leonardo was resting his head on the table with paint brushes sticking out between the fingers of his left hand. There were splotches of paint all over his shirt and hands, one across his forehead that looked accidental. He was looking at his half-finished painting with uninspired dreary disappointment. When he heard Ezio he looked toward him without lifting his body from where it was lying on the table. 

“Is this part of the process?” Ezio asked. 

“When it’s necessary,” Leonardo said.

Ezio nodded. “I have an idea.”

Leonardo did sit up then. “I would be delighted to hear your idea.” 

“It starts with putting all this away.” Then he smiled and Leonardo sighed with his shoulders slumped forward and exhausting making his already beaten face look all the more ragged. He nodded but did not smile before he turned his attention toward sorting out his supplies.

\--

Ezio took Leonardo’s clothes (and some of his own), Leonardo’s bag of sketch books and left a note. He stuffed the bags into the trunk of the car and picked a direction that would take him as far from the rest of his family as possible. His motivation was (not) entirely selfish. Leonardo sat in the passenger seat of the car with his head back against the headrest and his eyes mostly closed to the blur of colors and light passing them by. If he was curious where they were going he did not show it.

Dusk was dampening the light in the sky by the time Ezio found a hotel that suited him. He gave his keys to the nice man that would park the car for him and assured the other that they could carry their own bags. Leonardo shoulders his with a grimace as it put weight on the bruises. “Should I be ashamed of what sort of money you’re about to spend for this seduction scene?”

Ezio snorted. He held the door and let Leonardo go first. “If anything you should be flattered. This isn’t only for your benefit.” Then he motioned toward any of the number of comfortable seats available for him while he went up to speak to the woman at the front desk. 

\--

Their room was not the finest available (Federico and Altair both suffered from an unfortunate need to waste money on useless upgrades) but it was suitable for their needs. Leonardo stood in the middle of it with paint on his rolled up sleeve and his hands pushed into his pockets. Ezio dropped his bag by the door and the room key on the closest table. 

“I don’t have to stay if you want privacy,” Ezio said. “I thought you needed to get away for a while. Don’t worry about my Mother or sister—they are too in love with you to speak a foul word about your work commitment.”

“Here I thought they were afraid I would sue them or sell them out to the magazines,” Leonardo said. He lifted his bag up and over his head so as to relieve the pressure that was hurting him. “Of course I thought you were bringing me here for sex, so clearly I am not as good at deductions as I thought I was.” He dropped his clothes bag like he expected to be reproached for it but set the sketch book against the back of a chair. Then he half turned around to look at him. “We do still get to have sex?”

“Food first,” Ezio said.

“Ah, concern is my least favorite trait to find in a lover.” Leonardo rubbed the back of his head with one of his hands, pulled the band that held his hair away from his face and put it on his wrist. “Chewing hurts. I’d rather suffer with hunger than pain.”

“Not all foods need to be chewed,” Ezio said. He found the room service menu and held it out toward Leonardo. “No sex unless you eat.”

Leonardo rolled his eyes but took the menu. “I liked you better when you were a remorseless fucktoy,” he said. Then he went to the table to slap the menu down and sat in the plush chair to look through it. “It’s cute how there are no prices on these items. I would have thought you would like to be reminded how money is of no importance to you.”

“Ah, we do. But there’s a thrill in knowing that you simply don’t have to care about how much it costs. I’m going to shower.” Then he picked up his bag again and went toward the bathroom. 

\--

Leonardo finished his dinner (meatless soups, mostly) and showered and came out of the bathroom naked. His body was long-and-skinny with clothes on. Deceptively unimpressive when well-hidden but without the clothes to make him look bony and underfed, his actual body was long-lean- _hard_ muscle. He stooped down to pick up his bag and dug around in it to find the clothes he intended to put on. They got thrown on the end of the bed before he dropped the whole bag on the floor. 

“You called me a fuck toy,” Ezio said. He had taken note of the word but it hadn’t been that significant when everything Leonardo said seemed to be driven by some unknown anger. (it wasn’t hard to guess at the source of it. It was no secret to think that wherever Sass was, her wrath was reaching its intended targets uninterrupted. It made Ezio wonder how Altair was faring in the aftermath of his stupidity.) “How long did you want to fuck me before this?”

A brief smile tugged at the good side of Leonardo’s face as he fell back to sit on the bed. “Since I saw the first commercial for your show. Sass watched it with me you know. Can you imagine that? All that time, right there next to me. That fucking whore was watching your dick cousin, watching him on his stupid phone sending the messages to _her_. We used to fuck after we watched it. A lot, actually. That works for me. I have a vivid, constant imagination and you feature prominently in several of my more well-developed fantasies. I’m so angry,” he said. “I’m—why am I telling you? Why should you care? Yes, I’ve wanted to fuck you for a long time.”

“You can tell me,” Ezio said.

“And you will tell your cousin. Sass is aroused by how stupid you are for hi—er.” Then he rubbed his hand through his hair and shook it out so little drops of water were flung onto the floor and the bed behind him and his own bare legs and arms. 

Ezio set down his phone that he’d been looking at and got out of his seat. His shirt was loose enough it could go over his head easily and be dropped across a chair as he passed it. Leonardo was looking up at him with tired-tired-eyes and his same-slumped-shoulders. “I would listen if you talked,” he said. He pulled at the button of his pants and pushed the zipper down so he could step out of his pants as they fell to the ground. “If that will not help you, I am willing to provide other distractions.”

Leonardo’s hands were cool and damp around his waist when he pulled him to stand between his spread knees. “Why?” he asked.

“I’ve had a lot of sex,” Ezio said. “I thought I was very good at it. I thought I knew my own body as well as anyone could.”

“So this is purely for sex and educational purposes?” Leonardo asked. His hands were pulling him forward even as he scooted backward on the bed to give Ezio the space to straddle his lap. It was minimally embarrassing how even that simple act was enough to make Ezio’s cock stir to attention. The implication of Leonardo’s possessing hands and the lewd way he gripped at Ezio’s ass like a promise. “Don’t fuck me out of pity,” Leonardo said so softly he could have denied the words in the next instant. “Or guilt.”

“Are you going to let me fuck you?” Ezio asked. The idea was a full heat in the pit of his stomach, spreading out to all of his limbs with the _possibility_. He had followed Leonardo back to his room (three?) days ago with limited expectations and a head half-filled with excuses about how he simply couldn’t. 

Leonardo’s hands were squeezing his ass now, kneading it even as he encouraged Ezio to rock forward against his body. His dick was half-hard and rubbing against the half-defined muscles of Leonardo’s belly. “I’d let you suck my dick,” Leonardo said. He was watching Ezio’s face when he said it. The intensity of it making the odd mix of shame-and-denial that quickened cold-and-dreadful in his chest turn hot as it sank to his gut. “Fucking is too athletic. I need to sleep.”

“I don’t know—” Ezio said. “I don’t know if I’d do that.” Of course not-so-very-long ago he was convinced he wouldn’t have allowed another man to lick his asshole either. He was sure that he wouldn’t have been reduced to relentless pleading by a few well-placed fingers and a sweetly hot mouth. He was almost entirely certain that the same-time-last week he wouldn’t have been so very at-ease with the stiffening press of the dick that wasn’t his pushing against his thigh. “Is there a second option?”

“Yeah, lay down.” Leonardo rolled them so Ezio was on his back across the massive bed, his legs still spread and Leonardo’s body slipping up against his. “I want to kiss you.”

Ezio nodded. “Not a good idea.”

Leonardo dropped down onto his elbows, pressed his face gently into Ezio’s collar as he shifted his hips so they were dragging-dicks against one another. His body was all muscle, slithering and sliding like a _snake_. His little sounds were intermittent drops of rain on parched ground—sorely wanted and seldom received. Ezio stroked his hands down Leonardo’s long back and kissed the top of his head where it didn’t hurt (hopefully). Then again on his right temple where there was bruise and his right cheek and his neck. Ezio was wiggling out from under him. “Ezio,” Leonardo said. He grabbed at him with his hands but was easy to roll onto his back. “Ezio don’t do this out of guilt.”

Ezio kissed his chest below the awful blue blossom of a slow-fading bruise. “I’m not,” he said. But he wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. His hands were braver than his chest felt like. They were down at Leonardo’s thighs to pull his legs open and get a generous wealth of space to lay. He nipped at the unmarked skin with careful teeth and rubbed his hand up the length of Leonardo’s dick. “Tell me about your fantasy,” Ezio said. “Tell me what you want to do to me.”

“I don’t want to scare you off,” Leonardo said with some attempt at humor. His hands were touching Ezio’s face, one of his fingers was tracing his lips and the other hand was pushing hair away from his face. “I want to fuck you like a dog in heat. I want to wrap you up in my arms and feel you trembling because we’ve been fucking for so long you can’t take it anymore. And I want to taste the way you moan when you come. I want you to pin me down to this mattress and _put your back into it_ because I want to feel you long after you’ve gone.” He paused to let Ezio gasp out a breath. “And I want this. I want to fuck your mouth—I want to the first one that’s done it, the only one you’d allow. I want to watch you talk to your mother and smile at your stupid brother and know that my dick’s been in your mouth,” Leonardo’s fingers slid in over his lips and rubbed at his tongue salty-and-hot.

“Keep talking,” Ezio said. He curled his fist around Leonardo’s dick and pulled it off his belly. There were little wet puddles on his belly and a slick of it across the tip of his dick as his voice went on-and-on, detailing the way he hoped to debauch Ezio. There was a quiver of fear in his chest in those last seconds before he ran his tongue across the unfamiliar taste of Leonardo’s dick and then he closed his mouth around the head of Leonardo’s dick and felt the way the hands in his hair clenched up and Leonardo’s whole body arched up. 

\--

The morning came before Ezio was ready for it. He was not only unprepared for sun but for the sober new reality where he was aroused by the idea that someone wanted to fuck him. That he had sucked another man’s dick (and liked it, really, or at very least liked the way Leonardo had liked it). He rolled onto his back with a groan and found the bed empty. It was a cool empty (the worst sort). He rolled out of bed and after making a brief tour to the bathroom, went looking for Leonardo. He found him outside on the balcony with one of his larger sketch books balanced on his knees. His feet were up on the railing as he slouched back into the seat. The page he was on was covered in birds. Little birds in the distance and larger birds in the front. There was a great black splotch in the center of the paper that looked as if it might have been a face but was now a hastily scribbled mess. 

“How smart is Altair?” Leonardo asked.

Ezio sighed as he leaned against the railing. He took stock of Leonardo’s entire body and decided he looked better—at least more rested—than he had the day before. He crossed his arms over his chest. “It depends on how you define that word, _smart_. My cousin is a genius. He can learn and understand anything that he comes in contact with. But he is not educated.”

“I’ve been in college since I was thirteen years old,” Leonardo said. “I can’t imagine a world where I have this ability to learn and do not use it.”

“I do not want to talk about Altair here,” Ezio said. “We are here to exist outside of that.”

“Do you do that often? Run away when you can’t fix something?”

Ezio cursed under his breath and ducked under Leonardo’s long legs to sit in the seat on the opposite side of him. He very (rudely) stabbed his finger on the black smudge in the center of the page. “I do not dwell. I do not carry it with me.”

Leonardo turned his head to look at him. “Don’t touch my sketchbook,” he said.

“I will only take you from your worries for a few days. Then you must go back to them. I must go back to mine.” Ezio moved his finger off the sketchbook because Leonardo was glaring at it rather than listen to him. “How does your face feel?”

“Like it has been tenderized with a hammer,” Leonardo said. “Did you teach him to fight?”

Ezio sighed.

“Last question,” Leonardo promised.

“I assisted,” Ezio said. “Now, come inside so we can order something for breakfast.”

\--

They were watching a movie, laying loosely together on the couch, with Leonardo concentrating on the screen so intently one might have thought he was actually paying attention the words being spoken. While his pronunciation of Italian was lacking in some areas he seemed to understand it perfectly. Ezio had lazily watched him watching the television (off and on) before settling in to pay attention to what was actually happening in the show. 

“Can I fuck you?” Leonardo asked. He didn’t look away from the television when he asked (at least not until Ezio stared at him with a bluntly confused expression and his mouth hanging open dumbly). “It’s fair. You want to fuck me.”

Fair was not necessarily a concept that applied to sexual whims. Ezio closed his mouth and licked his lips. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“I’m very good at it,” Leonardo assured him. “If you need time to warm up to the idea, you can fuck me first. I’m good at that too.”

“And so modest,” Ezio said. He would have liked to be more reproachful but his dick was hard and his head was suddenly overwhelmed with half-realized ideas about how he would like to spread Leonardo out and ravish him. The necessity of _care_ that was required do the bruises. “How? I mean—I know how. But how would be best for you?”

Leonardo was amused at the question, half turned toward him so his shoulder was against the couch. He wasn’t looking Ezio’s face but at any-other-part of his body. His bare shoulders, the wrinkles on his belly from slouching so low, the way the pants he was wearing clung to his thighs before he looked back up at him. “How would you fuck me if I was some woman you just met?”

“That depends on the woman.” There was probably more to it than that. Probably something about how he was feeling that day or how long it had been since he had sex but primarily (most importantly) it was about what sort of sex the other person was agreeable to. Leonardo pushed a hand against his shoulder as he lifted his body up and dropped into Ezio’s lap. “How would you fuck a woman you just met?”

There was a laugh at that. Leonardo’s head tipped back as his hands slid up to rest against Ezio’s jaw. The healing-cuts on his mouth were sliver-thin now but the bruises all over his face were just as ugly as they’d been the day before. When he tipped his head forward again, his thumb ran across Ezio’s lower lip. “We are going to have a terrible time if neither of us can decide.” Then he ducked low enough to kiss Ezio. 

It was a strange sensation to realize (only now) how very much he had missed the ability to kiss Leonardo. His hands were hovering in the air as he pressed (gently, cautiously) back against the pressure of Leonardo’s mouth. “Does it hurt?”

Leonardo smiled at him. “It’s not bad.” Then he kissed him again with one hand pressed to Ezio’s chest and the other dropping down to grope at his dick through his pants. “Maybe we won’t fuck yet. I like kissing you.” 

\--

Leonardo fell asleep sprawled out across the bed and Ezio took the opportunity to check for any family disasters. While he had a litany of well-developed insults from his sister (mainly slurs about how he wasn’t even a ‘homo’ and why the hell did he take ‘a perfectly good man’ and ‘you’ve already fucked half the female population why did you have to start with the males’). Mother asked him to return Leonardo by the end of the week but otherwise no further drama had been revealed. 

Ezio didn’t want to disturb Leonardo (who needed the sleep) so he went and laid on the couch instead. There was no intention of falling asleep and yet he woke up to poor light and Leonardo sitting on the floor just out of reaching distance with his drawing pad open and half-a-dozen sketches of Ezio’s slumbering face. 

“I don’t usually draw people unless I ask first,” Leonardo said. 

“I don’t mind,” Ezio said. “Are you going to draw me—”

“If you say ‘ _like one of your French girls_ ' I will never suck your dick ever,” Leonardo said without looking up from his drawing. When he did look up, his face was utterly devoid of humor with an expectant nod of his head encouraging Ezio to finish his sentence.

“Naked?” Ezio asked.

“If I drew you naked I’d have to show it to my friend who is also in love with your amazing body. Apparently, Sass told her to ask me for a picture of you naked. That’s only surprising given that Sass spends most of the time arguing with everyone about common decency and morality and that Sass had such faith in me to get your clothes off.” Then he stuck the pencil he’d been using behind his ear and set the sketch book to the side. “I mean, I had faith in me.”

“What is Sass going to do about this,” Ezio asked. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. The slow tip of Leonardo’s body toward him came to a jarring halt at the question and the promising expression on his battered face faded into sad resignation. “Last question. Promise,” Ezio said softly.

Leonardo licked his lips and looked down at his own crossed legs. His shoulder lifted and dropped as his eyebrows furrowed in indecision. When he looked up again, the black-yellow coloring around his left eye was highlighted by the slow-anger-and- _sadness_ that pinked his right eye. He huffed, then licked his lips and finally, “I don’t know. I imagine that even now, Sass doesn’t know. Part of me wants to believe that whatever spell your stupid cousin has on hi-- _er_ isn’t stronger than the person that Sass is. This,” he motioned at his face, “is an undesirable outcome but I don’t regret it. I don’t know your cousin save for how he presents himself and the damage that he has done to Sass. I love Sass. I didn’t want to. I still don’t want to. Love is a terrible burden. If it had been anyone but _Altair_ , Sass’ wrath would tear them to pieces.”

Ezio slid off the couch and sat with his knees pushed against Leonardo’s. “Has she said anything to you?”

Leonardo laughed (sad and bitter), “no. She won’t. She’ll wait until I say something first. It’s a very clever punishment, this silent treatment. It requires no effort on her part, allows her the time to think of a perfect rebuttal and allows me to imagine all the ways in which I will be executed by her wrath.” His smile wasn’t as physically pained but wavering on his face anyway. His tongue was pink across his lips and his voice was unstable when he tried to speak again. He cleared his throat and said, “I want food but I also want to fuck. I’ve always believed fucking on a full stomach is a terrible idea.”

“Fucking didn’t work out for us the last time,” Ezio said. 

“But this time I know how I want to be fucked,” Leonardo said. He put his hands on Ezio’s legs and leaned forward, used his arms to lift himself up to kiss him and nipped at his lips.

“Yeah?” Ezio repeated.

\--

Leonardo was a vegetarian. It probably should have taken Ezio so very long to realize it. (For that matter, it may have been mentioned to him at some point or another.) It shouldn’t have been such a slow-dawning realization. It seemed out of place across the table from still-naked Leonardo licking sauce off his fingers and humming in pleasure at the taste of his food. 

“You don’t eat meat,” Ezio said. His own plate was an assortment of slaughtered animals. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it doesn’t mean you can’t.” Leonardo finished licking his fingers clean. “Personal question?” Then before Ezio could ask what manner of personal he meant to ask, Leonardo said, “personal questions about your body.”

“Sure,” Ezio said.

“Why do you trim the hair on your testicles but not on your chest?” This blunt question from the man who had been pulling his hair and saying _filthy_ things like _fuck me harder_ while Ezio fucked from behind him hard enough to knock the bed against wall. Leonardo made it sound so mundane with one of his heels on the edge of the chair and his whole naked body shamelessly on display. The effortlessness of his confidence was an affront to Ezio’s delicately constructed arrogance. 

“I don’t know,” Ezio said. He shrugged. “When I was a kid, my Father had a hairy chest and then my brother and then I did. It’s what I expected. I have very thick hair.” Incredibly thick hair, as one of the ladies who frequently cut his hair as a child. It had expanded to cover the rest of his body as he aged. The hair on his legs was as dense as a forest in places. “I prefer the look and feel. My chest?” He shrugged. “It does not bother me.”

Leonardo nodded. “What about your partners? Do you prefer—shaved?” 

“It depends on what I’m expected to do,” Ezio said. He picked up his fork again. “Hair is not as much a problem as cleanliness.”

Leonardo was laughing at him but trying not to. It made his face and neck flush out pink as he pressed a hand to his mouth to keep from spitting his food out at him. He was shaking his head back and forth while his head tipped back. 

“What about you?”

“I like a well-manicured lawn,” Leonardo said. “But it is not so important to me.” He was still smiling though, all bright with amusement at Ezio’s answer.

\--

It wasn’t that Ezio hadn’t been woken up in the middle of the night for sex before. (Because he had, rather infrequently.) It was that he wasn’t expecting to be woken up in the middle of the night for sex and so the little jostle of motion against his shoulder did not immediately prepare him for the weight of Leonardo’s body slipping up between his legs. There was a sweet kiss against his jaw.

“Are you awake?”

“Mm, I could be,” Ezio said. He felt in the dark for Leonardo’s hair and curled his fingers into his long hair. It had snags and tangles from their half-attempt at sleep. “What did you have in mind?” Leonardo kissed his neck and his chest. He rocked lazily down against him with a hum of consideration at the question. Then he slid back up to kiss him properly. The damp press of his mouth was liquid-heat and welcome. Ezio tightened his grip in Leonardo’s hair and regretted it when it made him hiss out a sudden noise. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Leonardo kissed him again (oh-so-sweetly), “it’s fine.” They kissed like idiots, rolling on the bed with their hands working their clothes out of the way. The blankets were kicked off to the floor and Leonardo was pinned under him with his arms and legs wrapped around Ezio’s body urging him on the slow-rock of his hips with the blunt press of his heels and the bitten little noises.

Ezio licked his lips and lifted his upper body off the bed with one straight arm as he rocked his hips and rubbed his dick against Leonado’s. “Are you always so insatiable?” It wasn’t what he meant to ask but with the light from the half-open bathroom door splashing across Leonardo’s face (caught in a look of deep enjoyment) it was hard to think of anything but how they had already done this once (twice, three times? Depending on one’s definition of time and sex) today. 

“Usually more so,” Leonardo said. “I need your dick back inside of me. Find a condom.”

The embarrassing lick of heat that ran through his body settled in his dick. It was a telling wet smear of arousal that made Leonardo’s eyebrows pull down as he lifted up on his elbows to stare down (perhaps to verify that Ezio hadn’t actually orgasmed yet) and then looked back up at him with a cocked up eye and said, “but how big is your cousin’s dick?”

“Oh God,” Ezio said. He shoved his hand against Leonardo’s chest to push him down again (after an awkward-half-thought of shoving him down by the face). He rolled off the bed to grab his bag from near the wall. “You would not like it if I told you.”

“I am already aware that it’s larger than mine,” Leonardo said. He had his knees spread open in a lazy sprawl that was interrupted only when he leaned over to turn the lamp by the bedside on. “I am curious for scientific reasons.”

“I have never measured it,” Ezio said. That was the truth. He had seen it because it seemed nearly inevitable that he wouldn’t have. In fact, he had been the unfortunate soul that the fool came to when the other kids in the locker room called him a freak for the length of his penis. He had stood there (oh so terribly inadequate in contrast) while reassuring his cousin that ever penis was different. “Eh, twenty-six, twenty-seven centimeters?”

“That’s—” Leonardo narrowed his eyes for a single breath before scrunching up his entire face at the thought. “That’s ten inches? Ten and a half? That’s obscene.”

Ezio laughed at him. “Is your curiosity satisfied?”

Leonardo nodded. Then he reached down to get his hands around Ezio’s dick and pulled him back up between his legs. “Unfortunately, yes. Now you have to make me forget I ever asked such a stupid question.”

Ezio kissed him. “I’ll do my best.”

\--

In the morning, Leonardo was out on the balcony again. He was not drawing birds (or clouds) but flipping through other pages of the sketch book. Ezio found him lingering on a page with the portrait of an unsmiling man. The man in the sketch was looking way from Leonardo but the details of his face were recognizable, his jaw and the shape of his ear, the way his eyes were looking downward and his lips were pulled ever so slightly into a frown. There was a useless tuft of hair on his chin and a great messy wealth of it curling around his ears. 

“Lover?” Ezio asked. Then (almost immediately), “I am sorry if you did not want me to see.”

Leonardo was startled by his voice but he didn’t slap the sketch book shut. He looked down at the picture and shrugged before he flipped it closed. “I have had many lovers. I don’t always draw them. I draw the ones I want to remember.” He motioned to the seat next to him and Ezio sidled past him to sit. 

“You drew me,” Ezio said.

“You are a very important conquest,” Leonardo assured him.

Ezio snorted. “So you are—bisexual?”

“Gay,” Leonardo said. And then almost too quickly, “ _mostly_ gay. The way I assume you are _mostly_ straight.”

“I am straight,” Ezio assured him. “I have never looked at a man and thought to myself: I would like to have sex with him. I can appreciate a well made body regardless of who it belongs to but I do not lust after men. You are a strange exception.”

“I wanted to be,” Leonardo said. “Also I am very good at sex and you would be a fool not to take advantage of this opportunity while you have it.” He set the sketch book to the side and looked out over the city. “Do you know something I have not convinced a lover to do before?”

“Have sex on a balcony?” Ezio asked.

“You are very smart,” Leonardo said to him. Then he slid off his chair and onto his knees in the narrow space in front of Ezio. They were so far from the ground it was impossible to think someone might see them but the dirty thrill of that possibility was an instant surge of lust. “Don’t touch my face,” Leonardo said. “I should be able to do this.”

“What about your hair?” Ezio asked.

“No. You like to pull it too much,” Leonardo said. “That doesn’t hurt but I don’t like it.” Then he was working Ezio’s pants lower, urging him to lift his hips to drag the pants down toward his knees. The chair was comfortably warm under his naked ass but the breeze of the air felt delicious indecent. “Maybe I should draw your dick, I do like it,” he said. Then he was licking his lips with a devil’s grin. 

\--

Ezio was not sure how it had happened, but the lunch they had ordered was going cold on the table in front of his face. The table was cool under his overheated cheek and the dishes across it were rattling as he slapped the flat of his palm against it again. Leonardo was chuckling behind him, dropping kisses on his ass that were more insulting than they were reassuring. “Mother of God,” Ezio mumbled. He tipped his head to look over his shoulder at where Leonardo was appraising his spread-open-ass-cheeks with the purely clinical air while his slicked finger slid loosely into Ezio’s now far-too-sensitive hole. He had been skeptical (at best) about the very idea of rimming when Leonardo has whispered it into his ear all-those-days ago. It had been amazing when he was half-drunk on wine and the thrill of this forbidden thing. Now it was a more precise pleasure. There was no haze to distort every delicate touch of Leonardo’s tireless hands and tongue.

“I don’t believe in God,” Leonardo said. He tipped forward again, drawing his finger out and lapped his tongue across him. Then he leaned back again. “I do believe in science. I believe in facts. I believe in study. I believe,” he stood up then, two of his fingers pushed into Ezio with a confusing burn that was neither bad nor unwelcome. He leaned across Ezio’s bare back so their naked skin stuck here-and-there where it touched. His dick was pressing against his ass even as his fingers flexed back-and-forth just inside of him, right where the sensation was the strongest. “In all the wonders of the human body.” His voice was right against the back of Ezio’s ear. “Did you know I can make you come like this? I’ve done it before. I wanted to test the theory, I bet a man I could use nothing but my fingertips to make them come without ever touching their dick.”

It was nice to know (this far too late) that he’d decided to have sex with evil incarnate. 

“Did you like my mouth on you, Ezio?” Those fingers were relentless, pushing in only far enough to keep that sensation of being entered forefront in his mind but not so deep to allow him the time to fully adjust to it before they were gone again. The confusing mix of almost pain and easy-wet- _pleasure_ was coiling up like a _tight_ need that made him arch his back to push back against Leonardo’s hand. 

“Yes,” he said when Leonardo kissed the back of his neck and then his shoulder. His bony chin was pressing there. “I did.” 

“I did too,” Leonardo said. He kissed his arm and pressed his fingers all-the-way-in on the next press forward. They slid into him with a startling sensation of relief from being tease that rattled out of Ezio’s throat as a pleased moan. He relaxed under Leonardo without ever realizing he had been so tense. “Did you like your dick in my ass, Ezio?” Leonardo asked. His hair was sweeping across the sweat-soaked planes of Ezio’s back as he asked. His voice retreating as he shifted his stance and started fucking his two fingers into Ezio with precise, dreadful slowness. 

“Yes,” Ezio gasped. His eyes were closed (when had that happened) as his fingers dragged across the fine-fine-table-top. His body was a sweat imprint across it, the sort of thing that one might assume would never wash out. 

“What did I feel like?” Leonardo asked. He was kissing the small of his back, nipping at the curve of his hip, pressing sweet kisses against his ass as his free hand spread Ezio’s ass open and the slow stream of air blew across the slick spread of his hole. 

“Fuck,” Ezio mumbled. 

“Not yet,” Leonardo whispered. His fingers slid free and his wicked tongue was back to torturing him. He reached between Ezio’s spread, quivering thighs to stroke his dick in long-even-pulls. 

“Oh,” Ezio said. He turned his face into the table top and smacked his hand against it again. He rocked his hips into the motion of Leonardo’s hand, drove his dick into the tight circle of his grip and pressed back against his eager-mouth on his ass. Then it was all-at-once simply too-much to withstand and he was groaning into the table with a helpless attempt at warning as he came. Leonardo did not _stop_ but continue on with the same precise rhythm until Ezio reached between his own legs to grab Leonardo’s hand. “Stop,” he gasped. He did not collapse (exactly) but was guided back to sit on Leonardo’s lap. 

“I wasn’t finished,” Leonardo said. He kissed Ezio’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around him for a moment. Then his hands went down to grab his thighs and pull them wide open. “Do you need a break?”

Ezio twisted around to look at Leonardo’s face. “What else were you planning to do to me?”

“As much as I possibly can,” Leonardo said. “I want to fuck you.”

Of course he did and if it were anything at all like what they had just done it would probably be worth discarding the last unwanted bits of his offended masculinity. Ezio gripped the chair back with one hand and bent his head to kiss Leonardo. “Right now?”

“You interrupted me,” Leonardo said between the first kiss and the second. “Now I’ll have to start again.” Then he kissed him again. “We should eat.”

Ezio looked over at the food and then at the sweat imprint of his body and then back at Leonardo. “If you’re hungry.”

\--

They watched movies in the afternoon. Leonardo laughed with tears in his eyes and one of his long arms curled around his body. 

\--

Dinner was a sober affair with the inevitable knowledge they would have to return to the world beyond these elegant walls in the morning. Leonardo picked fitfully at his food and when he could not bring himself to eat he said, “what do you remember about your brother? I have not asked you.”

Petruccio was a tender spot that Ezio did not enjoy poking at. He pushed his own plate away from himself and picked up the glass of wine. It was cool against his palm but he did not raise it to his mouth. “I am not as eloquent as my sister and Mother. My memories are different. Federico and I were—loud and _rowdy_. Petruccio was sick very young.” He had remembered his Mother’s quick-reproachful voice telling him to leave his brother alone. He could remember Petruccio’s dark-eyes and solemn face when Mother took him away from wrestling. 

Ezio remembered Federico’s arm around his neck to drag him back to playing and the bitter hurt that stung his chest. He had been too young to understand his Mother’s concern then. Now it seemed only _logical_. There was no use in thinking too long on sad things. He took a sip of the wine and set the glass down again. 

“My brother—Federico,” he said, “he used to smile. When we were boys, he smiled. He knew how to play. You do not care for my cousin, I understand, but when Altair was little he was very likeable. He laughed about everything! Federico said he was like a doll with a pull string, you could say anything to him and he would giggle. Hysterical giggles. He was fat too. As far back as I can remember, Altair was fat. A big, healthy baby. He was warm when you touched him. Federico and I would roll him back and forth across the floor and he would laugh the whole way there and back. And Desmond! Desmond would carry him by the neck and the little idiot would _laugh_. One year, they built slides in the garden for Altair’s birthday. Huge slides, slides as tall as the house. The big boys—Federico and me and Edward—we took the babies down the slides. I remember the feeling of the cold air on my face as we went down. I remember it started to snow. Back then, _everyone_ was alive. Umar—Altair’s father—he didn’t like the snow but Altair loved it. He was picking it off everyone’s coats and eating it, licking it off the ground. I remember it was my turn to go down the biggest slide but I had to take a baby. Desmond didn’t want to go and Altair was eating snow off his Father’s jacket.” Ezio stretched in his seat and sighed. “I ran up to the house to ask my Mother if I could take Petruccio. She told me I couldn’t and I was very angry. I called him a worthless baby.”

Leonardo’s eyebrows creased at the words.

“I didn’t know,” Ezio said. He rubbed his hand against the back of his head. “I was—nine, I think. I missed my turn on the slides. I was angry the rest of the day. I smacked Altair because he kept trying to lick my coat. It was his birthday, that was not a wise choice. Federico found me in the house—I was,” he motioned at his body as if he could show now what he had been like then, “I had been screaming and kicking. Acting as no boy my age should. Federico came over and sat next to me. He put his arm around my shoulders while I whined about how unfair it was. He said to me, _Altair is very fat and very loud and very annoying._ And I said yes he was because I had slapped him and been punished for it. Federico put his head against mine—I remember it because he had been smiling about Altair but he did not smile we he said, _but Petruccio isn’t and he never will be._ That is how I found out my brother was dying. My parents did not tell me for much longer. They did not tell Federico until much later. But he knew.” 

“I’m sorry,” Leonardo said.

Ezio shrugged. “Petruccio’s life was a shadow. Whenever we could be sent away, we were sent away. We spent our summers rolling Altair in the grass—at least until his Father died. Altair didn’t laugh the same after his Father died. When we went home again, Petruccio was so small. He was so pale. He was so cold when you touched him. Every year, Altair got bigger and fatter. Every year my brother got smaller in comparison. He was a wonderful child. He was light and air. He was never sad. He told me that he was glad to have a brother like me. I did not know him. I was never given the chance to know him—not really. I loved him but I could tell you more about any other child in our family than I could tell you about him.”

“Your sister has a thousand memories of him,” Leonardo said softly. “Maybe you should ask her?”

“I like the few I have,” Ezio said. “Reading to him at night. Holding his hand in the garden. I climbed the walls of the villa to find feathers on the roof. He asked me to help him make a cake for Claudia’s birthday and we woke up very early to do it. It was pudding, it was not a cake. But she was very happy to have it.” He shrugged again and stood up. The somber reality of it was making his body heavy so he shook it off. 

“Thank you for telling me,” Leonardo said.

Ezio nodded. “Would you like to go for a walk? I don’t like sitting still so long.”

\--

The walk led them to a bar. The bar gave them drinks. The drinks loosened their joints. Leonardo was smiling at him with his black-and-red-streaked eye attracting the wrong sort of attention in the bright-lights of the dance floor. Ezio wanted to lick the taste of his smile right off his face. The difference in their heights, the easy way Leonardo’s arm fit over his shoulders, the almost offensive way he towered over him was an aggravation that he could no address _in the bar_ where they were expected to remain upright. So he dug his hands into Leonardo’s loose shirt and pulled him down to whisper lewd-offers in his ear. Leonardo’s arm tightened around his neck and he nodded.

\--

Back-at-the-hotel, they were loose-limbed and stupid. Leonardo was stronger-than-expected. His hands and arms and whole sliver-thin body were enough to pick Ezio up and carry him from the door to the bed. He was quick-with-his-fingers, stripping off the clothes Ezio had foolishly chosen to put on. His kisses were sloppy and liquor-flavored. 

“Fuck me,” Ezio said (now, when Leonardo was too filled with alcohol to think of reasons to say no). He lay against the wealth of pillows while Leonardo fetched the supplies and kissed him again-and-again as Leonardo’s long-long fingers worked their distracting magic. 

“Oh fuck,” Leonardo gasped against his chest when he fucked him. “Ezio.” His name dragged across Leonardo’s lips was the highest praise. Ezio’s hands were stroking his back and his mouth was kissing the ugly bruises on his face and shoulder, touching at the freckles on his nose and catching open-mouthed kisses and catches of sweet-adoration as Leonardo fucked into him. 

\--

After three AM, Leonardo was out in the dark of the balcony, wrapped up in a stolen sheet, looking down at the lights of the after-dark city. His phone was a blunt shape on the floor of the balcony. The glimmer of the lights caught the tears on his face but he didn’t look up at Ezio even after he’d been standing there far-too-long. 

“Can I help?” he asked when the silence had surpassed awkward and dragged into impolite. 

Leonardo dragged in a breath and let it out again. “No,” he said. 

“I am inside if you change your mind.” He retreated inside and found late-late-movies to watch until he fell asleep on the couch, still straining to hear any sound from the balcony.

\--

In the morning, Ezio stood by the door with his own bag hanging from one shoulder and his phone in his hand. He had mastered the art of flirting his way into the good graces of pretty girls that were mesmerized by his face and his accent (and money). It was another thing entirely to wait so awkwardly by the door for the man that had picked him apart and reassembled him again. The thing that he felt was not _love_ but a definite _fondness_ and an even more profound _respect_. 

Leonardo stopped in front of him with a confused uncertainty. “Yes?” he prompted.

“Can I have your number?” Ezio asked. “Maybe we could—talk or meet again?”

There-again that smile (all bright and breath-taking) and Leonardo leaned down to kiss him. He said, “yes of course.”


End file.
